Soaring and Crashing
by sweetbreezes
Summary: Sonic the Hedgehog was world famous for being a hero with attitude and the ability to destroy any drone to come within distance of him. Though what the public fails to see that those close to the blue blur are painfully aware is that his recklessness is just as big as his wit and courage. Takes place between Lost World and Colors.


**A/N:** Yikes, two multi-chapter stories posted at the same day and being written at the same time? Yeah I'm not exactly good at this, and I got these two ideas and was dying to try them out.

Unlike Well Met, this fic will be much shorter but contain more action. It'll be that mixed in with lotsa friendship fluff, maybe a bit of angst throw in. I wanted to try out action stuff, which is the biggest reason behind the existence of this story.

It shouldn't be longer than five chapters, but I'm not completely sure of that. We'll see how this goes. A short chapter to start us off, the next one will guaranteed be longer!

* * *

The door to the workshop opened without the slightest complaint from the hinges. It slid across the wooden floor as the bright light of the afternoon filtered in through the wide gap in the wall. The sunlight from the door was mostly unneeded, since the two windows on each wall were open and the curtains were drawn back. The living room that was surrounded by said blue walls was in no need of further sunshine, as the two occupants had enough to spare. They were sat on the couch that was standing against the wall in the back, a table with gadgets laid out on top in front of them.

The culprit of the extra sun and opened door cleared his throat, earning the attention of both hedgehog and fox. The latter looked up first, smiling in the direction of the newcomer. "Hi, Knuckles!"

The blue hedgehog sitting next to the golden cub did the same as his friend, though his smile looked more like a grin. "Took ya long enough!"

The echidna rolled his eyes, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. The remaining light was forced out of the workshop. It would've been a rude gesture had the light had been, you know, alive. "Not everyone can run the world and back in five minutes, Sonic."

"That wasn't five minutes, that was ten," replied the speedster, leaning back on the couch with his arms behind his spiky head. "'Sides, you aren't exactly a slacker. You're no me, but you're no snail either, Knux!"

"And I'm glad I'm not an annoying hedgehog who loves diving blindly into certain danger," the oldest of the bunch shot back, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Guy, I'd love to hear you bicker and get at each other's nerves, but we have more important stuff to get to," the twin tailed fox broke into their argument before it could escalate to true Sonic versus Knuckles levels, giving them both a quirked brow.

The echidna huffed and shook his head, pretending he could ignore the obnoxious smirk on the blue blur's face. "Fine. So, what are we dealing with now?"

The young fox nodded and drew his fingers over the screen of the tablet he had laying on his lap, his hand moving swiftly atop the glass akin in speed to Sonic's footfalls. "Remember the robot bug me and Sonic implanted in Eggman's base yesterday?"

Knuckles nodded with a blink of purple eyes. "Got the report yet?"

Tails asserted his question with a dip of his head. "Yep, brought back a map and a scan of his plans. It looks like Eggman's trying to harvest the Chaos energy within the Chao to power his machines, kinda like he did back with the Wisps."

Sonic now had his arms crossed over his arms next to the fox, emerald green gaze hardening as they glared at his feet, resting on the table. "Egghead really doesn't get tired of sucking the life outta others, does he?"

"You can't say you were surprised by it, though," the young genius spared a look at his friend, frowning somewhat at Sonic's suddenly serious look.

"Nah, but that doesn't mean it's alright to sink this low even once," replied the hedgehog with a roll of his eyes, his nose twitching.

Knuckles knew Sonic wasn't all fun and games, like he had hypothesized way back when they were first starting to interact much without Knuckles thinking Sonic was opposing him. He'd seen the hero hold discontent in his look and voice, but it wasn't exactly something he saw everyday. Sparingly, yes, but it wasn't a daily occurrence. The situation up in the amusement park Eggman had cooked up a while ago must've looked much more somber than the echidna had initially thought. Not that he imagined it to be suns and rainbows, but not exactly to the level that would make Sonic look like he wanted to spindash his foot.

The vulpine, sky blue optics shifting their gaze to look at Knuckles, "We're a bit worried as to how this would affect the Chao. The Wisps were warped to become dark and unstable, and since the Chao have an energy like they did.. Well, we're not sure if they'd be affected like the Wisps had."

"And even if they're not being made into dark purple monsters, getting energy sucked outta ya isn't exactly pleasant," the hedgehog seemed to be over his spell now, though the serious undertone to his remark wasn't impossible to pick up. He shivered, his quills bristling and digging into the couch. Had it not been for the fact that the sofa was built by Tails to regenerate post hedgehog spines stabbing, it would've become torn surely.

Knuckles was listening attentively to all this information, narrowing his eyes in concentration. "It isn't unlikely. After all, Chaos used to be a normal Chao before being mutated by the Master Emerald. Who knows what trying to extract their energy would do to them?"

"I really don't feel like dealing with another flood in Station Square," quipped Sonic, though there wasn't much humor in his voice. _Much_.

"So what do you want to do about this?" Knuckles questioned Tails, raising an eyebrow at the eight-year old.

"Our main objective is retrieving the Chao," Tails said, returning to his tablet and typing a few commands. "The bug bot sent us a replica of the building, and I managed to find a tunnel which the Chao can fly through."

A few clicks opened the way for a picture of a 3D map to show on the screen. The image shown was that of a long corridor, which veered to the right when the wall came up. The room was green through the screen of the gadget, but Knuckles knew he wasn't missing much that he hadn't seen plenty of in the past. Gray for the most part with neon colors in sparse places, with plenty of Eggman logos plastered on the walls. He could see one at the end of the corridor, which made the echidna scowl.

The fox holding the tablet swiped up and proceeded forward, then did the same to the right once the wall was bumped into and yet another hall came into view. This one, however, had plenty of branching pathways.

"This is givin' me a headache," groaned Sonic sarcastically. "Couldn't Egghead make an easier base to run through?"

"I'm pretty sure that was the reason behind it," Tails finally looked up at both Knuckles and Sonic. "He probably built all these different halls and corridors to confuse you, or slow you down at least. He made a labyrinth so you'd have a tougher time getting out.

"You'd think he'd learn I'm not a lab mouse by now," scoffed the azure hedgehog, flapping one of his gloved hands. "Well, unless he left a chilli dog at the end of it."

"I don't think even junk food could help you get through that," Knuckles remarked, shaking his head in amusement as Sonic glared but didn't say anything. Even he knew they had to get through this fast if they wanted to help the Chao in time.

"So, what I'm thinking is that we get the Chao out through one of the tunnels that holds the cables for the machinery, connected to the cell rooms," Tails explained, starting rather abruptly in order to stop the two from fighting again. "There's plenty of space for them to fly above the wires without having to touch it, they'd have to walk in order to do that."

Both hedgehog and echidna nodded their heads at the fox kit, the echidna humming in acknowledgement.

"Here, this is the way I found." The youngest then began to swipe at his screen again, going through different menus and buttons until a replica of a wide tunnel appeared, the floor littered with wires and cables coiled together. They led the way down the tunnel, which turned to the left and out of sight.

"It leads to a computer room, and right next to it is the forest that Eggman built this place in. But because most of the trees are destroyed, you'd have to dig us a way down until the robots leave, then we rush to the Tornado."

"So we go inside, let the Chao go and tell them to go through the tunnel, but what when they get to the computer room?" Knuckles asked skeptically.

But Tails looked at him with a smirk that resembled Sonic's far too much for the echidna's comfort. "I installed a few lasers onto the Tornado, we can use those to blast the grate on the wall and let them run outside. I guess the room isn't that crucial, since it's unguarded, so we won't have to deal with robots. We'll hide the Tornado in a ditch the bug bot found, put the Chao in there, and fly off! Then we'll come back to get Sonic when he runs out of there a few minutes later!" Agile fingers returned to the tablet and did this and that until the image of a rather small room with computers set up on either side popped up. Indeed, a metal grate that must've been Eggman's poor excuse for a window was attached to the wall.

The echidna blinked at the confident reply and demonstration the vulpine gave him before he nodded, spines dangling from either side of his head. "I'm guessing Sonic will be the one dropped off into the base, and you and me will be aerial support until we can come down to help the Chao."

The golden fox nodded, his tails waving slightly at either side of him in triumph. "Yep! You and me will distract the robots if they end up being too many, but otherwise we'll stay hidden to get the Chao away without much problem. We'll help the Chao get out and we'll all hop aboard the plane and fly off!"

Sonic had been listening intently to everything, and Knuckles assumed Tails had already discussed this all with his surrogate older brother. He had taken a while to get there, though you couldn't blame him seeing as how he had to glide down from his island and then walk his way here, and ten minutes was enough for Tails to give Sonic a quick run down of the plans. Now however, the hedgehog looked up with a surprised look, blinking at the fox who had begun to tell Knuckles how they would leave in a few minutes.

"Woah, wait," the cobalt blur interrupted, tilting his head at Tails. "So we're just going to leave the base there with a lil' hole on the side?"

The young cub turned to meet Sonic's confused look with one of his own. "Uh, yeah? Our priority is to get the Chao out of there, and that's what we want to do."

"But Eggman can get more!" Sonic replied, his ears twitching somewhat to lay back. "If we leave his techno heaven standing, he'll only go out and get more. The Chao we save will be fine, but he'll do the same thing and we would be stuck in square one again."

This time Knuckles was the one who frowned at Sonic. "And what are you saying we should do then? He probably has a back up of his plans somewhere else, so destroying the main computer wouldn't do much."

"Blow it up, of course!" You'd think by the speedster's tone that his words were the most obvious to ever be spoken. However, the shocked expressions on the faces of the fox and the echidna said otherwise.

"What?" Tails and Knuckles chorused.

"Blow. It. Up.," Sonic pronounced each word slowly, placing emphasis on all three.

"We get that, but.. Sonic, the island he built this all in is far too small for you to gain enough running distance to not get seriously hurt by an explosion! Unless you want to go for a swim, we can't-" And the young vulpine was interrupted once again by the hedgehog.

"I won't need to 'cause I'll be in the Tornado with you guys. It's like this, you guys drop me in the base, you guide me through the labyrinth as planned via communicator, I break the Chao free, tell 'em to go all the way till they make it to the computer room, you guys blast the thing open and tell em to get a head start towards main land, and I set down the bomb to blow up in a few minutes before speedin' my way outta there with time to spare!"

The laughter that Knuckles let out was completely without humor, but dry and sarcastic. "You think you'll be able to get out of there with the bomb activated? Didn't you see the place? It's packed with maze after maze, how are you planning to find your way out of there in time?"

"You guys have lasers, ya know," Sonic replied, somewhat indignantly. "I'm sure we can find another room that has a grate with kinda easy access."

Tails frowned nervously, but groaned and picked up his tablet again much to Knuckle's surprise. Was he humoring Sonic, or actually thinking about going through with the plan?

"..Like this?" the fox turned the tablet around to show his friends. It had the picture of a room that looked somewhat similar to the one the Chao would be exiting out of, though the security was the total opposite on the outside. While the first computer room was devoid of guard robots, this one's door was surrounded by them.

"I found a path that's easy to go through. Starts at the center of the base and leads to this," the fox's ears twitched. "It's got a ton more robot's though, both on the way to the door and _at_ the door." Tails then shook his head and put down his device, meeting eyes with the blue blur. "Sonic, I get what you're saying with having to get rid of the base; Eggman wouldn't come back from such a fall quickly and would probably try a different scheme in a couple of months, but it's too-"

"Reckless," spat Knuckles, though his sharp tone hid the fact that he was purely dreading the idea of something would happen to any of them. "Fitting, but not needed. Look, hedgehog, we can bomb the place tomorrow after we get the Chao out."

Emerald green eyes turned to look at Knuckles, who dreaded the pure determination burning within them. Now he knew why Tails had to look for a way to show Sonic his plan wasn't going to work, he wouldn't have had it otherwise. "He'll just kick the security bots up a thousand notches and make it harder to get through! I'll have less chances of making it out then. We need to do it while we've got surprise on our side!"

The yellow fox sitting next to Sonic fidgeted, "I don't think any of us can pull it off, Sonic. It's too risky, and I know it's also risky to leave the base with minimal damage, but.. you could get seriously hurt. And if that happens.." Luckily, Sonic interrupted the genius with a smile before his kid brother could say what none of them wanted to imagine.

"May I remind you I outran a black hole, bud? If you tell me the way of getting to the room before we go in, I'll remember it! And even then, you can tell me during the mission. I'll spindash the robots like nobody's business, make my way inside, you guys can shoot the tacky window and we'll be outta there before you can say Chao!"

Tails's brow furrowed more, his lip curling along with it. Sky blue depths were the definition of conflicted as they looked up at the owner's older brother, a battle between understanding and staggering worry raging in them. He kept quiet, averting his glance down to his shuffling hands with a quick look at Knucles, who snorted at the azure hero.

"The room will also _explode_ before you can say Chao."

The hedgehog turned towards Knuckles and waved his finger at him, smirking. "Nah ah, I'll set the bomb to go off in fifteen minutes. The way looks simple enough, and with my speed I'll be outta there in less than five. That way we have ten minutes to gain distance!"

The Guardian grumbled and narrowed his eyes. "I still think it's like asking for a death wish."

"Eh, you think that about every mission we do, and we're fine, right? I've dealt with explosions before," Sonic waved a hand, though the determination in his eyes was unwavering.

"Yes, you have, but last time you came into contact with one you were stuck in the hospital for weeks. Even if you make it out injured, I don't want to play nurse anymore than anyone else does."

"And I don't very much like playing patient either," Sonic shot back. He got to his feet, red sneakers hitting the ground and standing their ground. "Look, if we deal with the place now, you can have more time for your precious Emerald. The Chao will be safe like we want them too, there won't be a need to deal with another Big Drip, and Eggman will be plenty busy for the next couple'a months." His gloved hands were now at his hips, a smirk playing on his face that begged for Knuckles to fire back, to just try to argue.

But in truth, Knuckles knew that even though he very well could keep arguing, nothing would sway Sonic. Nothing ever _could_ say Sonic. Steadfast was his name and steadfast was his game. Sure, his name and game was also annoyingly stubborn and reckless, but time was running out, and if Tails' silence signified anything, it was that the fox had agreed to try out Sonic's plan, though out of agreement or accepting Sonic's stubbornness Knuckles couldn't tell. Again, he hadn't been there during the Wisp ordeal, but he knew Sonic could run fast enough to clear the distance.. were it not for the maze. But they couldn't do anything about it, and sooner or later they would have to go back and blow it all up. As much as the echidna hated to admit it, this rash proposition was both the only way to deal with the threat quicker and the only way to satisfy Sonic without him doing something even more hasty, just so the Chao could be safe.

The red Guardian groaned and rubbed his face with his palm, dragging it down his muzzle and back to his chest. "Fine. But I still think you're diving head first into certain chaos."

Sonic chuckled and grinned, rubbing his nose with his finger. "'Course I am! That's what makes this fun!"


End file.
